Stamp your backgrounds...

I have to admit that I just love and adore cool background stamps. The ones with only rough lines or little spots, the ones that seems more like some wrinkled paper or old pattern.

But as much as I am into them... they are way to expensive. And hey, I buy too much too expensive material for crafting already! One of the reasons why I sell my stuff is to be able to get more material ^^ And if even I am asking why some little rubber, pressed or laser cut, whatever... is so expensive? And how could it be that people are buying this? I mean it is okay to sell them not too cheap because they design, production, everything costs much... but you can see how unbelievable some prices are for me because I can't stop rambling about that in this post ^^

Silke from "für große Mädchen" sends me cool packages full of random crafting stuff (from fabrics to paper to strange things) from time to time. In one were some scraps of old wallpaper with 3D structures ("Vliestapete" in german).

I also had some acrlyic felt... and double-side adhesive tape... and of course some stamping ink...

I never thought that I would love the results that much! 

Some of my "stamps"...

Look at the structures!

My "reagents"...

...added together...

...and if I had also glued on some stable background (but I made just one this way)...

This (cheap!) ink pads work great with the wallpaper background stamps...

...but you could also use acrylic colours or lino print colour...

...and every single print will look different! 

Dots and more dots and recycled dots!

While I am sitting here and waiting for word and the PC in general to work with me (saving some files, printing some stuff... but the PC won't cooperate with word anymore. Hey, both systems I use are from the same company, please stop being so bitchy to each other!) I thought I could upload pictures from the stuff I made over the last weeks. At the moment my blog is not really up to date but this may change hopefully after christmas :)

So here we go: Some little tags I made. 

I used some old gift wrapping paper, glued it on recycled cardboard (we all have enough of this kind of card board at home!) and cut out little circles.

Then I cut out little squares with some "spike-like" structures and painted them silver with a silver edding. And no need to be careful about the spikes (or whatever I should call them), just cut them freehand, they'll always look perfect! :)

I cut another square (without the funny spikes this time) out, so I cut glue both suqares together.

Between the card board squares I put my little circles and some yarn...

Finished.

Really fast, just a sweet little tag made :)

Going nuts!

As soon as I saw this structures I knew I had to work with them! I found them at the department of floral decoration in a crafting store, hidden beneath a lot of other stuff. I was fascinated by the colours, the structure, the strangness as well as this feeling "I know this stuff". And of course you'll know too because these are just walnuts. Dried until they are hard as wood or even harder than a lot of sorts of wood I know. 

I drilled some holes in them with my dremel (I am voting that every one needs a dremel! Just image the holes you can make into everything! Okay... that sounds a little bit... weird, nai? But the thought: "Oh, I could make a hole in it!" occurs very often in my brain). 

I glued the metal wire into the holes... there you go!

And the first pair of earrings I made out of them went into the advent calendar of my sister Lachafa! :)

I am so happy that she loves them as I do...

One could see a family pattern in there... Love of strange stuff!

But hey... can you resist going nuts? ;)

Lines and shadows

Some days are just not worth it. Not a moment of it... or so it seems at the first glance.

I am still happy to go into my bathtub now with some great bathing stuff smelling of wild roses and with a little bit of girly sparkles. I bought one but being at home it was not enough so I made some stuff by myself. It's a lot easier than most people think if you have the right ingredients at home. Some of them will be not really cheap but they'll last forever! And after the bath: Just go to bed! Cuddling with my cats, reading a little bit and then just falling asleep... and forget about the day.

On the good side there are the people who will be at your side at a day like this. Giving you some reassurance, helping out of the black hole, drink some champagne with you...

...or tell everyone that their earrings were made by me! ^^

But still... such days drains out every little bit of energy which I have.. and for which I had to fight for over the last days, weeks, months... just emotions but harder than any exercise... so the mind is sleepy but the body is wide awake. In some old evolutionary ways waiting for the attack to come which made the body so nervous.

In this "in between time" I crave to create things. A quote of me is that crafting or better creating keeps me sane. A lot of people smile or laughs when I say this and most of them never realize that I don't mean this in some figurative sense but just the way I said it.

It is like breathing very deep and hard, like getting this nervous energy of the body and the drained moments of the brain in a line. Both together are able to create and not only craft. Although the line between stuff and art is a very thin line and at least in my simple opinion also a very subjective line in a lot of aspects, if I am in a state like this I cross this line at least for myself.

I don't think about what I am making. It is more like looking at something which is already there and creates itself. Sounds strange? Try to image how it is to see and feel the creature which comes out of the broken and rough rubber-like material while you are carving.

They are just shadows, some lines, they are rough and cut within the quadrate... but they have life. They look at me, straight, quiet, watching, and in their own way they are a essential part of me.

I am not sure whether I like them. But I do love them.

Little cones...

...with a touch of pink glitter added! 

A little bit of glue added, thrown into a box with pink glitter... quite easy to make! 

...and so perfect for the season :)

Leather flower...

Made from some leather scraps... 

I cut out circles, put a hole in them and put them in hot water to get some wrinkled shapes. 

Afterwards I used my embossing tool to get them dry in a short time. After this process the wrinkles will be permanent!

I added a little pin on the back and a real silver bead at the center of the flower. Quite simple but with a great effect... 

And of course... advent calendar stuff! ^^

Magnetic pink!

Sparkles, lots of sparkles in pink! 

This year the pink advent calender got some of these magnets. I used clear glas nuggets...

...added a lot of glue on them...

...to cover then the bottom with a lot of pink powder / sparkles!

And of course I added some magnetic tape... 

(I always use add some extra glue because the tape is not the strongest one)

I love the effect!

Just a picture so you get an idea how it looks and sparkles (love that word ^^) in real!

Stamp your frames

This is my newest stamp. Nothing new in the design because I already made several frame stamps. But this one is nevertheless something really special: I made it just for myself! ^^ 

Now the question came up what to do with a frame stamp. Most of the times I use little frames for post adress on snail mail envelopes. 

Here I used some (rather cheap, you can see the colour spreading a little bit) red and violett ink pads on old cardboard... and cut out the inner part...

From the same old cardboard (you can see some glue dots and stuff like that on the surface, I just recycle good cardboard I get from packages and co :)) I cut several small and long pieces for the sides...

...just glued 4 pieces together... I wanted a little 3D effect in the end...

...glued the finished pieces on a different (also recycled) card board...

...you see the layers?

...and just added my stamped frame with the cut out on top.

The finished frame :)